Dead Son Returns To His Old Haunts

October 31, 1988|By Reviewed by Edward Hawley, a Tribune editor.

Possession

By Peter James

Doubleday, 270 pages, $17.95

Here`s a book to curl up with in case the goblins in your neighborhood don`t provide enough tingles for your spine this season. Peter James has written a well-paced chiller that will have you turning every one of those 270 pages until you find out what is compelling Fabian Hightower to return to haunt his mother, Alex.

Fabian was killed in an auto accident in France as he was returning from a school holiday to his studies at Cambridge. It appears, however, that Fabian is having trouble ``crossing over,`` and therein lies a problem of supernatural dimensions for his mother.

Peter James, a British author and filmmaker whose movies include the award-winning ``Dead of Night,`` treats the subject of the ``other world``

with deft confidence and control.

The main character, Alex Hightower, is a literary agent in London, and she is separated from her husband, who lives elsewhere. ``Elsewhere`` is a small winery he maintains remote from London. It is a perfect location for something especially grotesque to take place, which in due course happens.

After Fabian`s death, Alex returns to her office, switches on her computer and receives a jolting surprise when the words ``Help me, Mother``

appear on the flickering screen.

There are other manifestations of Fabian`s presence. On the day of his death he ``appears`` in his mother`s bedroom. She thought he had returned safely from France. She soon learns how mistaken she was. It subsequently develops that Fabian appeared before his father as well. Alex`s husband was Fabian`s father, wasn`t he? And if he wasn`t, who was?

Alex in desperation consults a medium to help her contact Fabian. The first medium is scared off by the evil she senses in Alex`s home. The second medium is more helpful-if that is the right word in such matters.

But Alex does something else too. She goes to see a Church of England clergyman. And in this, Peter James puts an ironic spin on the standard remedy in these matters of restless spirits. The usual recourse in fiction and in flim for those who have attracted the unwelcome attention of supernatural others is to turn to prayer and to the power of the church to exorcise demons and evil spirits.

When Alex asks for a service of exorcism, the curate cites bureaucratic obstacles. A case must be made to the bishop, and a decision might take weeks, he says, adding that in her case permission could take as long as two years.

He suggests a requiem mass to be held at her house. But the two clergymen who arrive to perform the rite go about the ceremony in a hasty and perfunctory manner.

Their lack of conviction is evident. And shortly after they complete the rite and are out of the house, it becomes all too clear how effective they have been in exercising their religious powers.

Tortured by Fabian`s ``presence,`` Alex is driven to find out all she can about her dead son. Fabian had a girlfriend. Who was she? But more to the point, where is she now? Fabian had a strange roommate at Cambridge. How strange was he?

The answers to these questions are revealed with suspense and a fine sense of the macabre. This book delivers maximum emotional torture for the money.